Checking in with my monthly reading update.

Three points I want to make today.

In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick

I loved reading this book. It’s not that long, only about 240 pages of narrative, and Philbrick is a fantastic writer, so it feels much shorter than the 93 starving days the survivors spent in their whale boats. The big things that stuck out to me about this were first, an excellent case study in leadership - the book fairly and deftly compares Captain Pollard and his first mate Owen Chase’s personality and the effects those personalities have on their voyage.

Second, most surprisingly, having just finished reading Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger last month, I was struck by the similarities of Nantucket and Odessa in terms of their place in American Identity and history. The two, distant, religiously unique, outposts; the centrality of the global oil market, the warrior identity that the they drew strength from that is also their undoing. All of these themes - to say nothing of their troubled racial histories - were fresh to me when reading it.

Overall, I just enjoyed reading this. When books are great, they transport us and this book reaches that level of transport.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J.K. Rowling

I’m still working my way through this. it’s 870 pages, which is around the page count of most translations of The Brothers’ Karamozov. Suffice it to say, this is an easier read, but not by much. Goblet got dark toward the end - this is book is disturbing pretty much every chapter. I’m enjoying it. I’m working my way through the Potter series and I’ll probably start the last two books in January.

the Anti-Library

The anti library isn’t a book, but rather a simple idea. The idea is that for every book you read, that is you add to your personal Library, you should add a book to your anti-library, a collection of books you haven’t read yet.

I like this idea because one, it answers the hardest question in reading: what to read next. I also like it because it keeps you humble. You know that what you know, and what you know you don’t know is very small when compared to what you don’t know that you don’t know. If that was confusing, sorry.

I mean to say, it’s a way of recognizing that the vastness of human experience and wisdom is not something we can reduce down to a list of books to be consumed. This is a temptation of anyone who begins reading - the idea that you can absorb, fully and without bias - all there is. There’s too much to take in, more to find than can ever be found, and I like the idea that I remind myself everytime I finish a book.